After her 28-year tenure as Director of Senior Services, Dr. Cyd Charrow will wave farewell to Rockville Centre this Friday at her retirement party at the Sandel Senior Center.

“I have mixed feelings,” Charrow said about her upcoming retirement. “It’s really bittersweet. I love the house and the area I’m going to, but it’s the people here I’ll miss.”

Charrow, who is retiring with her husband to her house in Apollo Beach, Florida, came to Rockville Centre from Chicago, Ill. on June 21, 1985. She was to serve as administrator to a small senior program

“It was the perfect job for me,” she said. “I could come up with ideas, and then I had someone else to follow through, so I had time to keep coming up with more ideas.”

Under Charrow’s leadership, the senior services program grew rapidly, and was soon designated as a separate department of village government. During her time as director, the Sandel Center expanded its facilities four times in order to properly host the growing number of residents who used its services.

And the seniors loved her. During her first two years as director, Charrow annually performed a one-woman show dating back to her acting days in Greenwich Village. The seniors could not have been more pleased.

“It was like having 90 grandmothers in the audience,” Charrow recalled. “They were all beaming and telling me I was better than anyone on Broadway.”

In 1991, the village asked Charrow — who holds a bachelors degree in psychology from the University of Illinois and a masters and doctorate in social work from Tulane and Adelphi Universities, respectively — to examine the training and development of village employees. This led to the creation of another department, Employee Development, of which she was also named director.

Sid Tanenbaum, who lived in Woodmere and owned a metal-stamping shop in Far Rockaway, where he was known more for his charitable ways than his two-handed set shot, has been honored for the past 30 years with a basketball tournament that raises scholarship money for students in the Five Towns.